The incident happened on the A22. The fuel was stored in cubes of one thousand liters each. The Financial Police seized 29 thousand litres
A large diesel leak from an articulated lorry stopped in a parking area along the A22 motorway heading south, between Brennero and Vipiteno, allowed the traffic police and financial police to discover and seize a contraband load of around 29 thousand liters of fuel.
the broken cube
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The alarm was raised by a truck driver parked in the lay-by adjacent to the articulated lorry which was leaking diesel. The Vipiteno volunteer firefighters and the A22 auxiliaries intervened on site, making the area safe, but also the traffic police, who inspected the loading compartment of the truck. The officers thus discovered that the diesel spill was not due to a malfunction of the vehicle, but came from one of the numerous plastic containers crammed into the trailer – the so-called “cubotti”, each with a capacity of one thousand thousand liters – which had been damaged during transportation. The driver declared he was transporting lubricating oil, but the strong smell of fuel led the police to ask for help from the financial police.
lubricating oil
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A patrol from the Bressanone company, which arrived on site, ascertained that the vehicle, with a Polish license plate and driven by a Ukrainian citizen, had left from a small town east of Berlin, headed for Naples, while on the transport documents it was indicated as recipient a company based in Spain. As for the type of product, the documents confirmed that it was “lubricant oil”, but a check of the load, also through chemical analysis in the laboratory, revealed that the one transported was, due to odour, color and viscosity, a liquid of the all similar to automotive fuel, classifiable among the so-called “designer fuels”. Based on these elements, the financial police reported the driver and proceeded to seize the vehicle and the entire load.